The present invention relates to sandwich grills and pertains particularly to a grill for making filled, toasted sandwiches or the like.
Filled, toasted sandwiches are quite popular in this country today, especially in fast food restaurants. Such sandwiches are typically grilled between opposing faces or dies of a grill. A number of different grill constructions are available. These however have some drawbacks. Among the prior art sandwich grills available today are those shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 2,463,439 issued Mar. 1, 1949 to Strietelmeier and U.S. Pat. No. 2,587,314 issued Feb. 26, 1952 to Hall. The former patent discloses simply a pair of dies hinged together for encompassing and holding the portions of a sandwich together during the heating process. In the Hall disclosure, however, the sandwich grill is mounted on a base member with operating mechanism for pivoting one of the plates toward and away from the other plate. The device includes electrical heating elements in the sandwich dies or mold plates. While these are both satisfactory in many respects, these are not suitable for high speed production.
While the Hall device may provide for the severance of excess sandwich material from that contained within the dies, such materials such as bread or crust or the like, will be severed from around the sandwich, however, will tend to catch and hand on the arm 25 of the grill. Neither of these sandwich grills actually provide for the problems wherein excess sandwich material is placed between the dies. For example, it is common to use bread which exceed the size of the dies themselves. In such case, the excess bread must be severed from that contained in the die and preferably permitted to fall within a scrap container or the like below the die.
Other deficiencies of these prior art devices includes the lack of complete control over the temperature and time of the cooking, thus requiring constant attention by an attendant. Other deficiencies include the lack of means for indicating the content of the sandwich contained within the grill.
Accordingly, it is desirable that a sandwich grill be available which provides for quick and efficient removal of excess sandwich material, as well as provide simple and convenient controls for completely controlling the time and temperature applied to the sandwich without requiring the attention of an attendant. It is also desirable that such a grill be available having means for indicating the contents of the sandwich.